Intel unveils button-​sized Curie mod­ule to power future wear­ables

Intel has today unveiled Curie, a low-​powered mod­ule no big­ger than a but­ton, as part of its vision to lead in the wear­ables field. Com­pany CEO Brian Krzanich announced the mod­ule, which will be built on a tiny new chip called the Quark SE, dur­ing his keynote at CES in Las Vegas — a year on from announc­ing the Intel Edi­son platform.

The mod­ule incor­po­rates the low-​power 32-​bit Quark micro­con­troller, 384kB of flash mem­ory, motion sen­sors, Blue­tooth LE and battery-​charging capa­bil­i­ties in order to power the very small­est of devices. Intel is hop­ing Curie will prove the flex­i­ble solu­tion design­ers need to cre­ate wear­ables such as rings, pen­dants, bracelets, bags, fit­ness track­ers and even buttons.

It has been cre­ated with always-​on appli­ca­tions in mind, so will be suit­able for devices that relay noti­fi­ca­tions or con­stantly track a wearer’s activity.Intel started down this road with its stamp-​sized 22nm Edi­son SoC and the Curie mod­ule shrinks it down even fur­ther. The mod­ule uses Blue­tooth LE and has a built-​in accelerom­e­ter and gyro­scope to track move­ments and rec­og­nize ges­tures. It can run either off a recharge­able bat­tery or a more tra­di­tional coin-​like watch bat­tery, though Intel doesn’t say for exactly how long. Curie basi­cally turns just about any­thing into a gad­get that’s at least as smart as your aver­age fit­ness tracker. Rings, but­tons, glasses, watches, whathave you.

Mag­netic Motors, Overunity and lim­it­less Energy from the Vac­uum Ander­son holds a degree in Soft­ware Engi­neer­ing from the Chubb Insti­tute (class of 1999). Lec­turer on Non-​Conventional Energy and Propul­sion Systems

“When the tyrant has dis­posed of for­eign ene­mies by con­quest or treaty and there is noth­ing to fear from them, then he is always stir­ring up some war or other, in order that the peo­ple may require a leader” – Plato